In GOP, Rubio Best for Middle Class
It is a shame that the Republican most helpful to the middle class has been dwarfed by the supposed populist Donald Trump. Senator Marco Rubio has crafted the tax-cut plan most helpful for Trump voters. Rubio’s expanded child credit would reduce the tax burden of working-class families. Rubio has also acknowledged the reality that vocational training may be a better financial investment for some than college. He has crafted plans to allow for more financial assistance to those types of programs.
Rubio has become better known for his specific plan to defeat ISIS, or explaining the nuclear triad to Mr. Trump during a recent debate. The Senator’s pro-life convictions are also abundantly clear. If he wins Florida, Rubio may even steal Bill Clinton’s comeback kid reputation. Yet, it is a travesty that Rubio’s economic proposals are not better known, in part, due to a media obsessed with the New York billionaire.
Sure, Trump’s vague promises to stick it to China feel good, but will he really be able to undo NAFTA and magically bring back millions of manufacturing jobs? I grew up in Michigan and I wish he would, but he can’t and he knows it. Yet, he preys on people who have lost hope about our country’s economy. Trump’s lack of specific proposals indicate how little good he would achieve as President on behalf of the American people. [How much evil he would do is unknown but depends on how seriously we should take his quoting Mussolini and keeping Hitler next to his bedside.]
With $19 trillion worth of national debt, a debt crisis is not out of question in the next five years. Yet, in comparison to Rubio’s tax plan, Trump’s would add an additional $2.7 trillion of debt over the next decade. Should the U.S. government be unable to pay the interest on debt, the default will hit the working and middle classes most. Is Trump’s tax cut so expensive to help the middle class? No. As opposed to Rubio’s 35% top tax bracket, Trump lowers the tax on the wealthiest to 25%. Whereas Rubio lowers the corporate tax rate to 25%, Trump would take it down to 15%. Trump is no friend of the middle class or of the working class. Mitt Romney’s recent call to have Mr. Trump release his tax records was significant. Trump’s tax records would probably shine more light on how helpful Mr. Trump is to himself at the expense of hard-working Americans who pay their fair share of taxes.
Trump’s rhetoric somehow suggests that he will fight for average Americans. This is not true. He will only fight for himself and his fellow billionaires. That is fine but let us not pretend otherwise. But, if somebody wants a champion for hard-working American families, that man is Marco Rubio, not the celebrity clown posing as a populist.
“One Right That Secures Them All”
There has been a significant fear over the past seven years that President Obama would restrict guns. But, the number of guns purchased over the past seven years has been indicative that this was a significant fear. President Obama has not. He might have…with a different Congress – we will never know.
I took the title for this post from a bumper sticker I saw in suburban Atlanta a few weeks ago. The implication is that the Second Amendment guaranteeing individual gun rights also protects other fundamental freedoms (speech, press, religion).
In the past seven years, Catholic organizations have been forced to violate their religious beliefs in order to provide birth control under Obamacare. Commencement speakers have been disinvited from universities because of various things they have previously said or supported. In other words, freedom of religion and freedom of speech have been challenged much more significantly than guns. There are many more guns in the U.S. in 2016 than there were in 2008. And, yet, those guns have not protected the First Amendment. None this would have surprised George Orwell.
Is this an anti-gun blog post? No. Although I am open to some moderate gun control, I have written in previous posts that gun control is not the best solution for mass shootings. One only need to remember that the San Bernardino terrorists wanted to kill people with pipe bombs as well. In Israel, terrorists successfully employ the technique of stabbing. Gun control is not the point of this post.
There are more dangerous threats to our general freedom than a Democratic President taking away our guns. Besides the threat to freedom of speech and religion noted above, the fact that the Kardashians have tens of millions of followers on social media is as much a threat to our basic freedoms. The smartest of pundits and scholars I follow on Twitter have tens of thousands of followers. They figure out how this country can survive, how more jobs can be produced…yet, I cannot think of one of them who has 1M followers. This is not small reason that another reality star, “The Donald,” has received three million Republican votes. Can democracy survive a society where our leaders are simply those most visible?
How about kids? What kind of society will we have in twenty years when we allow Netflix and iPads to raise our kids? Yet, having guns is somehow going to solve all our national problems. That’s ridiculous. The opposite of crazy is crazy. It’s like switching out Obama for Trump – pure insanity. Opposing gun control is one thing; suggesting that keeping our guns will make all our other problems and threats go away, c’mon.
Remalian Cocar 
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